Catégorie : Business News

Since ChatGPT’s launch two years ago, generative AI (gen AI) has been promising to reshape how work gets done. The use cases are many and varied, and we’re still discovering what’s going to work best, for us as individuals, in teams, and as organizations. In a surprising twist, it’s the white-collar work of the office that seems to be more imminently replaceable than the blue-collar work of the field and factory.

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

The iPhone is no question one of the most interesting and successful products to be launched in the past two decades. In one sense, it’s amazing how it grows with you. Regular operating system updates, an app store that lets you install new content and tools, accessories like AirTags or AirPods you can add to it. At the same time, a lot of us find we want to buy new ones every few years to get the latest camera technology or longer battery life or some other new feature. Apple is walking a very fine line between what product marketers call planned obsolescence, forcing us to continually buy better versions of what we already have, and adaptability, ensuring that we can improve and extend the use of our purchases. Our guest today says that the latter category of products is what will drive consumer spending and loyalty, as well as corporate value going forward. He’s here to explain why and offer insights on how organizations can make the shift. Vijay Govindarajan is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and the co-author of the HBR article “Design Products That Won’t Become Obsolete.” He’s known to his friends as VG. VG, welcome.

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: Thank you very much, Alison.

ALISON BEARD: So tell me more about this shift that companies are making from planned obsolescence to product adaptability, and explain some use cases beyond tech products that include software updates.

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: I think in the past companies have followed this planned obsolescence, which is we had a product for single use and after that single use, you throw away the product. And this has been the engine for commerce in the 20th century. And the beauty of that model is you keep buying more things. Products that grow are products that adapt, change, and evolve as the customer needs evolve. There is a company in India which makes shoes for children which can expand in three sizes without any human adjustment. They have come up with a path-breaking technology – a new material which expands as your feet grow. This is an example of product that grows. But if you want a non-tech example, we can go all the way back to 1949. This bicycle company Huffy for the first time introduced a bike called convertible bike, where it added a training wheel. The moment you add a training wheel, the bike can be used for a very young child and then you remove the training wheel and make the seat and handlebar adjustable. Then the life of the bike extends from few months to several years. This is a product that adapts and grows. I think we need to change the paradigm from planned obsolescence to products that grow, from use and throw to use and grow, from design to die to design to adapt. This is the new fundamental shift in new product design.

ALISON BEARD: So I can see how this adds value for customers because you get to keep a product longer and it improves over time. But what is in it for the companies beyond maybe being able to charge a higher price?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: It is true that if I make a pair of shoes that you have to throw it away and buy new shoes, I can probably sell three pairs of shoes, as compared to this company in India, which makes a shoe that expands to three sizes. Here’s the point – I have seen the amount of environmental tax we have put every time we throw a product after single use. This has reached a point where companies will lose their social license to operate unless they come up with a solution that minimizes the damage to the environment. The second part is customer value. A customer who can buy a pair of shoes which expands in three sizes is not going to buy three pairs of shoes, and therefore if you are a company, your primary constituency is your customer and you have to add value to the customer. Therefore, I say the twin demands, customer value and environmental sustainability, call for companies to fundamentally rethink how they design products. But it is true that will the company make less money? Because earlier they could have sold three pairs of shoes; now they’re able to only sell one pair of shoe. Think of it this way. Suppose just for the sake of argument, a pair of shoes costs $100 and it takes $50 to make the shoe. So in the past with planned obsolescence, I could have sold the customer three pairs of shoes. That’ll be $300 revenue and $150 cost. That means I made $50 margin. In the new paradigm, products that grow, I can charge the customer say $200 for a pair of shoes that expands to three sizes. Therefore, the customer is better off. But if it only costs me a hundred dollars to make the $200 shoe, I still make the 50 percent gross margin. Therefore, my point is actually products that grow is a competitive weapon companies can use because it satisfies three things simultaneously: customer value, environmental sustainability, and corporate profits. And if a company is able to do it, competitors will be at a disadvantage. Therefore, this is just a matter of time before this new paradigm will become the normal practice in companies. Why I’m saying this is products that grow happened in 1949 with Huffy’s bicycle, but products that grow will accelerate with the advent of digital technologies and the other kinds of technological improvements, like the stretchable materials. Therefore, this is only going to accelerate. If a company doesn’t do it, it’ll be a serious competitive disadvantage.

ALISON BEARD: You also talk in the article about how allowing the customer to grow into your products can actually streamline the customer feedback and innovation process. Talk a little bit more about how that happens.

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: That is absolutely true because today in the planned obsolescence model, you talk to the customer when you introduce the product, and after the product is used, the customer comes back to buy the same product again. Whereas if I have to design a product that adapts, a product that grows, then I need to be in touch with the customer for the entire life cycle of that customer because that is the only way by which I can make sure I can add new functionalities to my product automatically when the customer needs it. Therefore, the customer engagement has to be much more long-term and continuous. And that itself has tremendous benefits. Here is a product that grows. A company has now come up with a tennis racket where they have put sensors by which the tennis racket learns how to improve the performance of that player because the racket now tracks where you make contact with the ball when you say you are serving. And it’ll instruct you how to make better contact so that your serve is faster. Similarly, they’re studying your backhand, your forehand, and continuously give you feedback as to how you can improve your game. For that company to continuously provide more value to the customer, it has to improve the software functionality. That means they have to be in contact with their customer throughout the life of the customer. So therefore, continuous engagement with the customer, life cycle, and brand loyalty and customer loyalty are critical here.

ALISON BEARD: But that sounds like an example of a potentially additional revenue stream. So in addition to maybe charging a little bit more for this product that grows, you can also add services on top of it?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: What I can create is a brand community. By that I mean I create a community amongst all the people who bought the tennis racket from my company. With the result, I am able to learn across customers when I provide feedback to improve the performance of a single tennis player. With the result, now I’m creating a brand community. Now I can charge a subscription for belonging to that community because it provides additional value and also that community itself, not only my software can give additional insight, but the community can begin to have conversation and improve each other’s performance by just sharing what they do, what individual players do. That’s a great example of how you can create additional value. Here is another example. There is now a breakthrough by which a company has found a way to create a stent that grows as the human body grows. Imagine a young child has a heart problem and you put a stent. Now, the child grows. In the past, I have to do another surgery to insert a bigger stent, but what if I come up with a material by which the stent automatically grows? Then the cost and the pain of multiple surgeries go away. But here is the deal. I can now charge for monitoring because it’s very important to monitor how that stent is performing, and that monitoring is an additional service stream. Therefore, products that grow give you revenues beyond the initial premium pricing. You can create complementary products, you can create upgrades, you can create charge for services, charge for being part of brand communities. That is why this is an extraordinarily powerful strategy to make money for companies, in addition to providing customer value and being nice to planet earth.

ALISON BEARD: Might some consumers, though, find those add-on costs off-putting? Or does your research show that they’re getting enough value that they don’t mind being privy to those additional revenue streams?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: Products that grow strategy has these inbuilt challenges because you don’t want to provide customers more functionality than it is useful for them. So products that grow essentially asks you to predict the needs of the consumers in the future and build that in. And therefore, you are now in the prediction game and you may be wrong. Therefore, through trial and error, you need to make sure your product evolves only to a point that adds value to the customer. You don’t want to annoy the customer; you don’t want to overcharge. But this is, again, something the companies must learn to do. Here is the point that I want to say, broader point that I want to say, Alison, which is every product can be a product that grows. However, that doesn’t mean because every product can be a product that grows, you need to make every product a product that grows. Think about a hammer. A hammer is a hammer. I don’t need to make it adaptable. So therefore, there are certain products, it’s fine the way it is. Or think about an adaptable paper clip. If a product is low margin, low price, what is the point in making that adaptable because the customer doesn’t see the value? So as a company, I need to step back and say, is it all right if I design this product once and it lasts forever for the customer? Then just go with that. Or ask the question, by making it adaptable, is it really going to add value? Because not all products can or should be made products that grow. But the point is there are too many products we make today which are use and throw, and therefore companies need to step back and look at their strategy. This is a strategy question. This is not just a tactical product design.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, and what about those industries that are built around planned obsolescence? I think about fast fashion, for example, many electronics companies. What’s your argument to them?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: It’s very interesting that you brought up fashion because fashion goes out of fashion. Adobe just came up with a new product which is a dress that a woman wears and they made digital petals with the result that the dress changes in very dramatic and very interesting ways. And therefore even in fashion industry, I can make that product a product that grows. There is nothing written in concrete which says certain industries, planned obsolescence is the only way to go. It’s just human ingenuity to figure out whether we can make that as a product that grows. Maybe it’s not cost effective today. It may be tomorrow. Therefore, you better watch what the technologies that are needed to make it a product that grows.

ALISON BEARD: So what other challenges have you found associated with trying to make products this way, particularly technology that adapts? I, for one, am very tired of software updates requiring me to restart my computer nearly every day. And then I also recently talked to a cybersecurity expert who explained that when we connect all of these products to the internet and the cloud, the attack surface expands dramatically, which puts us all at hacking risk.

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: I think it is absolutely true. There are challenges. There is security concern when a product grows only through software updates, so that means somebody is accessing my private life by putting a software update. But you can build protection against those security issues, but it is definitely an issue. The other challenge is, you may not have the expertise to create a product that grows because the expertise may be outside the capabilities your company has. So therefore, there are limitations, there are challenges, but they can be overcome.

ALISON BEARD: Talk a little bit more about how the design process changes when you’re trying to solve for a series of customer pain points rather than just one. How do you make sure that you’re creating a solution that actually does have real longevity?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: There are four ways one can design a product that grows. The first is you pre-configure the hardware itself, and we already gave the example of Huffy’s convertible bike. There you have pre-configured the hardware with the result the bike life grows from a few months to several years. Another good example is a company called Chair for Life, and that wheelchair is built with modular base where you can attach medical equipment, you can attach extra storage. There is space for third party add-ons. So that’s one way you can design where you pre-configure the hardware so that the product becomes adaptable. The second is pre-configure the software, and we gave the example of the tennis racket where the software is pre-configured, with the result it begins to learn and adapt. A third is the hardware is not pre-configured, but the hardware becomes adaptable. By that, I mean you started this podcast with the example of iPhone, and iPhone is not an adaptable product because everything on the iPhone is completely integrated. In fact, it’s interesting. I bought the iPhone, whatever the latest iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 charger is different than the charger for iPhone 15. So they even make you buy the charger again. There is a company called Fairphone. What it has done is not to do the iPhone and the smartphone as an integrated package, but make it modular. When you make it modular, then I can give you the hardware updates. For instance, suppose the camera technology improves. I just need to only add the camera function. Why do I need to buy the whole iPhone again? Whereas in the Fairphone, they just give you the updates for the camera. If you can design the product in a modular way, that is another way you can do hardware updates after you sell the product. And finally is the software update. Tesla is a good example. And it was interesting. I met Elon Musk maybe about a decade ago and he told me something which really stuck in my mind. I used to be a Mercedes-Benz guy, and when I met him I decided I’m going to buy a Tesla and I am a Tesla owner for the last ten years. He said something, he said, “VG, when you buy a Tesla, you will have a new Tesla every time you go to your garage.” And what he means is he gives a software update, at least one software update every month. And every software update essentially improves some functionality in that car, as compared to the use and throw model where companies introduce new models of automobiles. Only in the new model, you have the feature. As a result, you have to trade in your old model and get the new model. Whereas Tesla does not have a model year. The reason they don’t have a model year is your car is absolutely up to date. So that’s a great example of software update, and there are other companies which do software updates as well. John Deere, using software, they’re able to change the horsepower of the engine from 40 horsepower to 900 horsepower. Think about that. If, through software, I can increase the power of my engine, then I don’t have to keep on buying new engines.

ALISON BEARD: And which of the companies that you’ve studied would you say is really the exemplar in building their whole business model around products like this?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: I think there are established companies, and we already talked about two of them, Tesla and John Deere. I would also say Rolls Royce and Honeywell are great examples of companies which have built products that adapt. And in terms of startups, I would say Aretto, which is the shoe company in India. FairPoint [sic], we talked about the modular smartphones. Moxie is a company which has a robot which teaches kids lessons; based on the stage they’re in, it changes the lessons. And the last one is View, which is a glass company, which it’s an interesting company in Silicon Valley because what this company does is they supply glass to commercial buildings. And think about an airport or a commercial building like John Hancock, which is all glass. In the 20th century, that glass, if you are making a presentation inside, you have to bring the blinds so that the slides will show. In fact, the blind defeats the very purpose of having a glass building. The whole purpose of a glass building is you want to see outside. Why do you want to bring the blinds and close it? What this company has done is has put sensors into the glass with the result if there is heavy sunlight, it tints so that the sunlight doesn’t come into the building. So I can have a PowerPoint presentation without bringing the blinds. And not only that, it extends the life of the glass because it doesn’t tax the glass that much. It improves energy efficiency inside the building because it doesn’t bring so much sunlight inside the building, and you avoid all the costs of the blinds. And this is a great example of a product that grows, as opposed to a product that is fixed. So there are startups and there are established players.

ALISON BEARD: And what kind of business results have you seen from adding or embracing these types of products in terms of sales or revenues or profits?

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: The company which I consider one of the forerunners in product that grows is Radio Flyer. They have this Grow with Me Racer, which extends from one year to four years. And the same car can be used by the kid for almost three years. And Radio Flyer introduced the Grow with Me Racer in 2017. And their revenues and profits have grown at 10 percent compounded in the last five years. And the last five years includes two or three COVID years. So that’s a good example of a company actually benefiting from this strategy. FairPoint [sic], their sales revenue increased from 80,000 smartphones to 120,000 smartphones in one year. That’s almost a 50 percent increase in sales. So clearly profit is one metric by which you can measure success. But I would say we need to change the scorecard – and a scorecard from planned obsolescence to product that grows. And the scorecard should track three metrics. The first metric is customer engagement duration, whether they mean instead of measuring time to replacement, we need to measure how long customers actively use and engage with your product. The second is revenue per customer over time. Track value captured through product growth rather than replacement sales. And the third metric is environmental impact reduction. Quantify the waste and resource consumption eliminated by avoiding planned obsolescence. And I think companies should publish the scorecard. They will be considered not only companies which make money, but they make money by doing good.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, it’s the Patagonia model, but with a twist because you’re actually providing extra value to the customer and potentially extra revenue streams to yourself with this grow-with-you idea.

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: Without a question. We talked about customer centricity. We talked about environmental sustainability. There are some companies which excel in customer centricity. There are some companies which excel in being friendly to the environment. Product that grows combines the two, and that is why it is a very powerful paradigm.

ALISON BEARD: Well, I really love this idea, VG. Hopefully more companies will adopt it. Thanks so much for being with me today,

VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN: Alison, it’s always a pleasure to be part of Harvard Business Review.

ALISON BEARD: That’s Vijay Govindarajan, professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and co-author of the HBR article “Design Products That Won’t Become Obsolete.” And we have more episodes and podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.

Do you know how your employees truly feel about their roles, work, and relationships? Asking the right questions in focused one-on-one settings is key to making sure you’re in tune with your people. This article outlines six questions to try to move beyond surface-level interactions. The more you recognize your team members as people with ambitions and dreams — not just cogs in the machine — the better you’ll understand how they feel about their jobs and futures.

Employee wellbeing is under serious strain. Roughly 60% of workers say they’re struggling with engagement, and one in five report feeling lonely, according to Gallup. This is no small issue for managers: employees who aren’t thriving are less productive, less committed, and more likely to have a negative effect on your company’s bottom line.

• The Big Four — EY, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC — are the world’s largest accounting and consulting firms.
• They pull in billions annually but have faced a slowdown in demand for their services.
• This is how the Big Four have performed in recent years, and how they’re looking to adapt in future.

Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC are the world’s largest accounting and consulting firms, known as the Big Four.

With histories dating back to the 19th century, they have grown into billion-dollar companies employing hundreds of thousands of staff who earn high salaries and often work very long hours.

The Big Four offer companies services such as workforce transformations, reshaping corporate finance portfolios, assurance, valuation, and optimizing the use of technology.

Put simply, they’re there to assess businesses and tell them how to run more efficiently.

The pandemic changed the landscape for the major firms, with a surge in demand that sparked a hiring boom. The Big Four are now attempting to balance operations amid slowing demand.

Here’s a look at where the Big Four stand.

EY

After a series of mergers, EY was formed in 1989 as the accountancy firm Ernst & Young. It has since diversified its offerings and, in 2013, rebranded to EY.

Headquartered in central London, EY has more than 700 offices in 150 countries. Janet Truncale, the global chair and CEO, took over from Carmine Di Sibio in July.

EY focuses heavily on consultancy and assurance but also covers tax and strategy, and transactions.

Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Revenue was up 3.9% on the previous year to $51.2 billion, according to the firm’s latest annual report published in October. It was EY’s poorest performance since 2010. Assurance services were its largest revenue generator.

In May 2024, the firm was caught up in a scandal along with PwC and fined $11.7 million by UK authorities for a series of auditing failures.

As pressure has mounted, EY cut UK partner payouts by 5% and laid off employees. Overall employee numbers dropped by 2,450 during EY’s latest financial year — the first decrease in 14 years.

EY’s global head count now stands at about 393,000.

In 2023, the firm launched EY.ai, an AI platform aiming to assist clients across all its professional services. It also offers clients a conversational AI assistant called EYQ.

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Deloitte

Deloitte is the largest of the Big Four by both revenue and employees.

Founded in the UK in 1845, Deloitte expanded into the US in 1890. It is headquartered in London and has more than 700 offices in some 150 countries. It’s known for strong business and technology consulting services.

Joe Ucuzoglu has been its global CEO since 2022.

In March, Deloitte announced a major restructuring aimed at cutting costs and repositioning it for future success.

It is « modernizing and simplifying » its core offering into four categories: audit and assurance, tax and legal strategy, risk and transactions, and technology and transformation.

Jim Spellman/Getty Images

Global revenue climbed 3.1% to $67.2 billion in the 2024 financial year, but, like EY, that performance was far lower than the 14.9% growth in 2023.

The slowdown has affected partner payouts, which fell by 4.5% to about $1.27 million. Equity partners took home roughly $63,000 less than they did a year ago.

Deloitte’s global workforce expanded to 460,000 in 2024, an increase of 3,000.

Deloitte has pledged to invest $3 billion in AI by fiscal year 2030 and has partnered with technology industry leaders Nvidia, Google Cloud, and AWS to develop its client offering.

PwC

PwC is often considered the most prestigious of the Big Four, and topped the latest Vault Accounting 25 ranking.

Officially formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, PwC’s headquarters is almost opposite EY’s main office in London.

Mohamed Kande has been the global chairman since July.

PwC has three core lines of business — assurance, advisory, and tax and legal services — but the firm is particularly known for its strong and well-established audit client base.

It employs more than 370,000 people in 149 countries and territories.

In 2021, PwC committed to creating over 100,000 net new jobs over a five-year period, and in October 2024, it said it had already hit three-quarters of that target.

Jack Taylor/Getty Images

PwC was the second-highest earning of the Big Four, posting record gross revenue of $55.4 billion and 3.7% annual growth in the year to June 30.

Though not as stark a slowdown as Deloitte or EY, growth at PwC still dropped noticeably compared to the 9.9% rise reported for the previous 12 months.

A number of high-profile scandals in the Asia-Pacific region involving its work with the Australian and Chinese governments damaged business.

To handle the changing environment, PwC cut partner pay by 5%, leaving partners taking home an average of $1.09 million this financial year.

In October The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm would make its first major layoffs since 2009 and cut 1,800 jobs.

PwC has invested $1.5 billion to expand and scale its AI capabilities. In February 2024, it unveiled a tax AI assistant for 2,300 PwC tax professionals in the UK to use.

KPMG

The smallest of the Big Four in terms of revenue and employees, KPMG is headquartered in Amsterdam and has a long-serving leader in chairman and chief executive Bill Thomas.

Its core services cover audit, tax and legal, and advisory.

The last of the Big Four to report its 2024 results, KPMG reported in December that in the 12 months to September 30, it saw revenues of $38.4 billion, a rise of just over 5% compared to 2023.

Overall, its revenues are the lowest among the Big Four, close to $20 billion less than its three competitors.

Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images

KPMG has faced scrutiny across several markets for its auditing and accounting work. In 2023, it was fined a record $26 million in the UK after « exceptional » failures in its accounting work.

Employee numbers grew by just over 1% in the 2024 financial year to reach 275,000. That’s 185,000 people fewer than Deloitte.

Over 2024, KPMG has made a series of layoffs. About 330 staff, or 4%, were cut from its US audit practice; 5% cut across advisory, tax, and back-office functions; and 2% from its advisory workforce in 2023, according to Accountancy Age.

KPMG said it is looking to invest more in specialist roles in areas like ESG, tax, and technology.

While it lags behind in revenues, the firm is seen to foster a less cutthroat workplace than its competitors. The firm has said it aims to have women in a third of partner or director roles by 2025.

According to its latest report, women hold 29.9% of leadership roles.

What’s your experience of working at the Big Four accountancy firms? Contact this reporter in confidence at pthompson@businessinsider.com

• It’s not the most popular take, but I don’t like celebrating the holiday season.
• Instead, I book long, international trips to places I’ve always wanted to visit but never had time.
• I love getting to see a new part of the world and give that priceless experience to my kids.

When my children were little, I felt the magic of the holidays deep in my bones.

Nearly every weekend, we dashed to see a light display or rode the Polar Express while drinking cups of rich hot chocolate.

Then, my kids got older.

As tweens and teens, they became hard to please. They seemed impervious to the joyful spirit of the holidays, grumbling when I booked holiday events and complaining about the gifts I chose for them.

I know this is developmentally appropriate, but it hurts. Last year, I decided to opt out of Christmas in favor of something I love: travel.

Instead of spending time and money on creating an extravagant day that would be stressful and (likely) unappreciated, I took my family on a trip to Morocco.

It was such a great experience that I’ve made international travel our new holiday tradition.

December happens to work for all our schedules

Jamie Davis Smith

There’s no substitute for seeing the world and getting an up-close look at different cultures and ways of life. I also think it’s the best way to raise empathetic, open-minded children, and I’m very fortunate to be able to provide them with these experiences.

However, my kids’ school schedules make it hard to go anywhere for more than a few days. I try to make the most of our summers, but that’s when it’s hot and crowded in many parts of the world.

Luckily, the kids reliably have an extended school break around Christmas each year, making the holidays an ideal time for our family to travel.

It’s refreshing to visit parts of the world where Christmas is just like any other day

Another big reason I travel during the holidays is to escape the stress of them, so I like to pick destinations where Christmas isn’t widely celebrated.

In many parts of the world, it’s just an ordinary day, so attractions aren’t closed — aka, we don’t sacrifice any vacation time.

Last year, in Morocco, I saw a smattering of holiday lights and small Christmas trees, mostly in hotels. That was perfect for me because I felt very little pressure to make Christmas Day magical.

I’ve figured out how to make holiday travel as easy as possible

Jamie Davis Smith

In order to make holiday travel easier, I book group tours.

Although I didn’t originally intend to travel this way, I planned last year’s trip in a rush, so it was the easiest and fastest way to make sure we could cover a lot of ground in the time we had.

It turns out that not having to worry about booking hotels or planning the logistics of getting from place to place was a welcome reprieve.

Even though I had more time this year, I decided to skip the stress and use the same tour company as a gift to myself.

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I may not like Christmas, but I’m not a complete Scrooge

Jamie Davis Smith

Skipping the holidays isn’t for everyone, but it works for me.

Even though I no longer have the will to create an elaborate Christmas at home, I don’t want my children to miss out completely.

Every year since my kids were little, I’ve taken them to the over-the-top Christmas displays at Gaylord National Resort in Maryland, and that has continued. We do all the Christmas things in a single day, from building gingerbread houses to seeing Santa.

It’s the perfect way to continue a holiday tradition without any pressure to be perfect — and minimal whining from my kids.

Additionally, I’ve always believed that experiences are better than physical gifts, and now that we travel, I keep presents to a minimum. However, on Christmas Day, I let my kids choose a special souvenir to commemorate the holiday.

• A Delta flight encountered severe turbulence last year, with 17 people injured.
• The NTSB’s newly published report says none of the injured people were wearing seatbelts.
• One passenger fractured four vertebrae and was hospitalized for over a month.

Newly released details from a 2023 incident that injured 17 airline passengers highlight the dangers of encountering turbulence, and serve as a stark reminder of why keeping your seatbelt on is always a good idea.

A Delta Air Lines Airbus A350 was flying from Milan to Atlanta when it encountered severe turbulence around 40 minutes from landing.

The National Transportation Safety Board made public its investigation last Friday. It found none of the injured people were wearing seatbelts despite the seatbelt sign being on.

10 of those who were injured were flight attendants, two of whom had serious injuries.

The flight’s first officer told investigators that he told the cabin crew they should be seated due to expected turbulence. A list of injuries, shared with Delta and the NTSB, said the injured crew members weren’t seated at the time.

One of those who was seriously injured suffered two broken ribs and back compression fractures, while the other had compression fractures in their neck and upper back, it said.

The other injuries to flight attendants included muscle strains, a concussion, and a deep cut that required stitches.

Five of the flight attendants were taken to hospital and released within 24 hours.

Of the seven passengers who were injured, one remained in hospital nearly a month after the flight. The person fractured four vertebrae and a rib, according to the NTSB report.

Another seriously injured passenger fractured one vertebra, while the others had muscle strains — mostly in the neck.

None of the injured passengers were wearing a seatbelt, the report said.

One of those passengers reported that her head hit the ceiling, hurting her neck, back, and head, although she was later able to walk off the plane.

Guy Gratton, an associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University, previously told Business Insider that a plane encountering turbulence is like « taking a box with something in it and starting to shake the box up and down. »

« And clearly, if you’re the person who’s inside the box, then you get thrown around inside the box, and that’s where injuries happen, » he added.

« Passengers are told to keep their seatbelts done up because if you’re tied to the box, you’re much less likely to get injured. »

While the Delta incident saw four serious injuries, cases of major injuries during turbulence are rare.

Between 2009 and 2023, 184 people were seriously injured by turbulence — an average of 12 a year — according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. The majority of those, 146, were flight attendants rather than passengers.

• Like regular body language, digital body language refers to what’s unspoken in texts.
• It includes how often a person texts as well as how even a conversation feels.
• A dating expert shared the digital body language signs someone is interested in you.

Conversations on dating apps can be tricky to navigate.

Is it a red flag if a new connection takes three days to respond? Is a text paragraph vulnerable, or self-centered? Does replying with a lone « k » really mean someone hates you?

Logan Ury, the director of relationship science at Hinge, told Business Insider that this is what’s known as digital body language (DBL), and it isn’t much different from in-person body language, conveying what is unsaid.

Ury said DBL includes « how long somebody waits to respond, whether or not they double-text, what punctuation they use, and if they use emojis. »

From her internal research at Hinge, she’s learned that users — particularly Gen Zers — rely heavily on DBL to quickly gauge a match’s interest in them. Among those daters, there are some widely agreed-upon indicators that a person isn’t actually into you, even if they technically always respond to your texts.

To prevent wasting your time on a confusing situationship, « you want to be good at deciphering somebody’s DBL, » Ury said. She added that it’s important to be aware of how you come off when you do like someone, so that they’re « not misinterpreting how you feel about them. »

She shared some digital body language signs that someone’s not really interested in you.

They always respond, but never consistently

Healthy relationships are built on trust and communication. Naturally, daters look for signs of it from the very first message.

According to a 2024 Hinge report surveying 15,000 Gen Z users, Ury said users have a 44% higher chance of getting responses when they answer messages within 24 hours. Their matches sense more seriousness.

This goes beyond the first few messages. She said 76% of users also look for message consistency. Someone who texts for hours one day but then is MIA for three is widely considered as disinterested.

Because of that, she discourages matches from « playing it cool » or delaying responses when they really like someone. « It’s much better to just not play games and respond quickly because those people are more likely to get onto dates and into relationships, » she said.

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Your text bubbles are imbalanced

Deep relationships require reciprocity and a sense of evenness. Beyond timing, Ury said the flow of conversation is a big sign of how interested someone is in you.

But it’s about more than just taking turns hitting each other up, Ury said. « For iPhone users, there needs to be that mix between blue and gray » text bubbles, she said. That includes the match « leading with a question and then offering answers that build conversation, » she said.

If they write you walls of text without asking anything back, it doesn’t indicate that they’re interested in knowing who you are. Ury has a term for these people: « ZQ, » or « zero questions. » ZQs indicate a lack of genuine curiosity to learn more about you, she said.

They’re ‘bad’ at texting, but don’t connect in other ways

Not everyone loves texting a lot — plenty of people prefer calls or simply can’t be on their phones during the work day.

Ury said that if they’re interested, they should be communicating with you about how they want to stay in touch. If they’re offline during the workday, they should be transparent about that — and find other ways to share that they’re thinking of you, such sending voice notes, memes, or photos of their day.

But if they don’t make an effort to be clear about liking you, it comes off like they’re not that interested in you.

It’s why Ury emphasizes meeting in real life quickly if you hit it off with someone: digital body language isn’t a science, and sometimes it’s worth having conversations around communication differences.

Plus, the better way to confirm if someone likes you is to meet them in person.

« You need to get to the date as soon as possible, » she said. « You don’t know if somebody’s in-person vibes will match their digital body language. »

• My husband and I moved from Hamburg, Germany to a small Italian town in August.
• The town offers homes for 1 euro and we were worried about the poor reputation these places have.
• However, we took the risk and we’re so glad we did.

My husband and I became interested in the 1-euro housing schemes in Italy last year but were concerned about investing time and money into a house in a village that was dying out.

We are in our early 30s and had read online that the catch to these 1-euro homes was that they’re usually falling apart and located in towns that are basically desolate retirement homes with little to no businesses.

We were coming from Hamburg, Germany, which has a population of 2 million and were nervous about what life would be like and being lonely in one of these small Italian towns.

However, after visiting some properties in one of these towns, we decided to take the risk, and it was worth it.

In the end, we avoided the 1-euro homes and bought a farmhouse for 29,000 euros, about $30,400, instead. Our worries about being lonely in a run-down town quickly disappeared after we arrived.

We were pleasantly surprised by how lively our town was

Courtesy of Callie Riemann

We moved to Sant’Elia a Pianisi, a village with about 1,500 residents in southern Italy.

When we arrived in August, there were festivals every day and night. There were parades, concerts, festivals with free food and drinks, sword fighting, and fire-breathing shows.

It felt surreal, moving to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere Italy, yet hearing English and German everywhere we went.

Courtesy of Callie Riemann

Sitting at the local Irish pub, we were surrounded by older US Americans who had left during a diaspora between the ’40s and ’70s, when many Italians ended up in the US or Germany for work.

Now, as they age, many have returned to their hometown to enjoy retirement. Their relatives also come to visit and explore their heritage.

Many still have family homes here in the village and donate money to keep the village running well while they’re away. This contributes to lovely projects, including handicap-inclusive playgrounds, parks, and holy places.

In August, we also met a lot of young people who have left the town for university or better work opportunities. Many expressed a longing to return to Sant’Elia and hope that the increase in remote work availability will allow them to come back sooner rather than later.

The town quiets down after August but is still full of life

Courtesy of Callie Riemann

We were afraid Sant’Elia would be a ghost town after August. To be honest, it did become much quieter, but not as much as we had anticipated.

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There are still parades every month. The three restaurants are quieter but still full on Saturday nights with live music and sometimes karaoke.

When hanging my laundry outside on the clothesline, I hear children screeching and giggling. There are families, both young and old, and they are all so kind and warm.

Most people in town gather at an outdoor market once a week, which offers fresh cheeses, vegetables, fruits, plants, and new and used clothing and shoes.

We can buy these items any day of the week at the multiple little grocery stores, bakeries, butchers, and clothing stores in town, but the market also offers the opportunity to socialize with other residents.

We don’t speak Italian, but can still communicate

Courtesy of Callie Riemann

My husband and I are learning Italian, but neither of us would say we speak it yet. That doesn’t stop the townspeople from wanting us to feel welcome.

We use what little broken Italian we know, and they accommodate with their own broken English and German.

When the language barrier becomes too tough, we resort to hand gestures or a quick game of charades to get our point across.

Words aren’t always necessary, though.

Many of our new neighbors have given us presents, from squashes and pomegranates to homemade cheeses and olive oil.

We feel very welcome and are happy to be part of this community.

We’re not far from the city

If we want more action and entertainment, we don’t have to go far.

The nearest city, Campobasso, has a population of about 47,500 and is a half-hour drive away.

One downside is the drive itself. It’s a windy one through the mountains with a lot of sharp turns and steep hills. Almost all of our friends we’ve driven through it wanted to throw up by the end.

Campobasso, though, offers a beautiful historical center, shopping malls, nightclubs, movie theaters, markets, museums, and cultural events.

Even without Campobasso, there is never a dull moment. I recently joined an expat Facebook Group for the region where people post daily about coming wine and food festivals, parades, and musical performances in their towns.

Sant’Elia is a small town in a small region of Italy, but we have found everything we could have ever wanted from this community.

• The European Union has finalized plans to build a satellite network to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
• The $11 billion Iris² network aims to provide high-speed internet to remote locations in Europe.
• Musk has frequently clashed with European politicians and has faced scrutiny over Starlink’s role in Ukraine.

Elon Musk’s Starlink could have a new rival after the European Union confirmed it will join the race to provide high-speed internet to remote locations.

The EU said Monday it had finalized plans to build a €10.6 billion ($11.1 billion) satellite network that will take on SpaceX’s Starlink. The bloc said the Iris² satellite constellation will include 290 satellites in low and medium-Earth orbit, with the service expected to be up and running by 2030.

European politicians have previously expressed concerns about the dangers of becoming overly reliant on Starlink.

SpaceX’s satellite internet service has around 7,000 satellites in orbit, according to expert estimates, and has seen traffic surge in recent years as it has expanded its operations to over 100 countries.

Starlink has also played a vital role in the war in Ukraine, with Ukrainian military forces relying on the service for military communications.

That reliance has caused tensions with SpaceX’s billionaire owner. In September 2023, Musk said he had denied a request to activate Starlink in Crimea, thwarting an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Musk has also frequently clashed with European regulators, who have launched proceedings against his social media platform, X, over the platform’s blue checkmark system, which the EU says is misleading.

Europe has also been trying to cut its dependence on SpaceX’s rockets with the Ariane 6, a reusable rocket that rivals SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and had a successful first flight in July.

The EU is not the only one building their own Starlink rival. Amazon is working on its own network of internet-providing satellites, called Project Kuiper, with the first satellites expected to be deployed next year.